Where I Stand

In the interest of full disclosure, I just took Version 7 of the Quiz to see where I stand as currently calibrated. Here is where I came out:

Maybe I should relabel this Leff-Leaning Moderate Libertarian. But since I don’t use “Moderate” for conservatives and liberals at this distance from the center, I may hold back. By the standards of the active members of the LIbertarian Party, I am definitely a moderate, or even a non-libertarian (damn socialist). But by the standards of the media, the term libertarian applies to me still.

And by the way, I too struggle with some of the questions. In the interest of brevity I didn’t include all possible permutations of answers including some of my own opinions.

And in all honesty, even if you score in the same Nolan Chart location as a candidate, you might still prefer another candidate. The Nolan Chart is not the only, or even best, 2D political mapping. One of these days I’ll devise a test based on an alternative political map.

For those who want to nitpick with my calibration, you can do a “view source” of the quiz proper and see how I score each answer. Look for “value=”. For each you will see something like 0_60. The first number (0 in this case) is the ord of the answer. The second is how I score it on a 0 to 100 scale. 0 is maximum authority/minimum liberty. 100 is maximum liberty/minimum government. 50 is status quo. Feel free to quibble with my calibrations in the comments below.

6 Responses to Where I Stand

I had this conversation a while back with an Anarcho-Capitalist on when someone is and isn’t a libertarian.

The basic agreement we came to was that it can come in three forms:

1. Someone who simply wants much less government than now.

2. Someone who wants government to be limited to police, courts, and national defense with small taxes to pay. Or simply a constitutionally-limited State.

3. Someone who subscribes to NAP (either for moral or practical reasons) as an absolute. Government would only rely on voluntary contributions or user fees only or it would not be part of the picture at all.

I came into the libertarian movement via Heinlein and the Friedmans. Was an anarchist for quite some time, but have grown more conservative in the old sense as I have grown older. I’m game to see someone give anarchism a test drive somewhere where government is so bad that even a failed experiment in anarchy would be an improvement. But I now oppose anarchism of the Rothbarian school — anarchy based on questionable a priori arguments.

I also have separate ideas for what I want government to do tomorrow, vs. what I want in the longer term. The political views I promote are the former, not the latter. For those are what an elected politician is elected to do.